


Knives In My Heart

by goddessofcruelty



Series: Heroes [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Sad, Unrequited Love, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 18:52:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1560521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddessofcruelty/pseuds/goddessofcruelty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He loved Steve with everything he had. That was part of what was broken. Because even Bucky knew that it was completely wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knives In My Heart

He _remembers_ now, remembers everything, the good, the bad, and the worse.

He stares at the display, the laughing, happy Bucky-that-was, and all he feels is anger. He wants to tear it down and burn it up. He doesn't know if that's him, or the Winter Soldier inside of him, feeling that anger. He supposes it doesn't matter. He turns away.

He goes by James now, when he needs a name. Bucky died in the war.

When he needs clothes or food, he finds them at a homeless shelter. Sometimes they try to get him to talk. He tells them what they want to hear. Vet. Head injury. Memory problems. They give him a notebook. Maybe it will help to write his memories.

James curls up under an overpass, wraps the dirty green blanket around himself.

He writes.

He starts at the beginning. He writes about Steve. Because that's the beginning for him.

Steve who called him Bucky. A joke at first, then their joke together. Steve who always knew what was right. He could always count on that. Because as much as Steve's body had been broken, Bucky been broken on the inside.

Steve was Bucky's compass. Bucky who did stupid things could always count on Steve to figure out how to fix it.

He loved Steve with everything he had. That was part of what was broken. Because even Bucky knew that it was completely wrong.

Bucky grew up handsome and tall, and Steve stayed sick and small. But still the heart of him was more beautiful than anything else. _Still_ Bucky loved him.

He was just better at hiding it now. Better at being a friend and brother.

And if he ached for Steve in the dark of night, if he _wanted_ so hard that his heart and stomach _ached_ , well, it was his cross to bear.

Bucky tried to bury himself in booze and girls, but it was never enough. He'd find himself wishing that Steve was there, going to say a quick joke to him, or even worse, accidentally calling dates by his name.

It might have been different if there'd been any kind of interest on Steve's part. Bucky would have been happy to be broken and wrong together. _Anything_ if they were together. Steve never showed him anything like that. Steve wasn't _wrong_ like Bucky was. And he knew there were others like him. He'd tried that too. They weren't Steve.

Then came the war.

Bucky saw an excuse to do something good with his existence for once. Steve, of course, was filled with patriotic fervor. Like he _should_ be. Bucky emulated that as best he can.

James writes about the first time that he saw Steve in his new body.

Now his outside reflected his insides - tall and strong, still handsome (because to Bucky he always has been), but now all in proportion. Bucky _wanted_ even more.

But Steve was long since lost to him. Not that Bucky ever truly had him. Not in the way that he wanted, had always wanted.

Steve was swarmed with chorus girls, and Bucky could see his crush on Peggy Carter from a mile away. So Bucky did what any best friend would do, he did his best to get the man he loved, the girl of his dreams.

James writes about that moment, the last he would see Steve for a long time, falling from the train. He remembers thinking, _At least he will have Peggy_.

He writes about Natasha. It's a hard story to tell. He writes how he and she sparred and trained by day, and moved together by night. But never love. Love had never been in the cards for either of them.

James has to go back for more notebooks sometimes. He tells the guy that they help. It seems to make him happy.

He moves every night. Because he knows they're hunting him.

He goes to the exhibit once a week while it's up. It's the closest he can get to Steve.

And he writes.

James writes about the things he did as the Winter Soldier.

Just the overview because even now he can't bring himself to give away state secrets. When he can't put a name, he assigns a number.

He keeps a running tally of his kills in the margin. He _needs_ to know how many.

Sometimes its too hard to write, so James draws. He sketches the scenery, things he saw around the world, Natasha once or twice. Steve.

He draws Steve a lot. Mostly memories from their childhood. A few images from just before the war.

Only one time, that first time as Captain America.

Because after that, Steve doesn't belong to him anymore. He's not Steve anymore.

He's _Captain America_ , and that's the final death knell for that last tiny shred of hope that Bucky had always clung to.

James writes about seeing Steve in the street, how the mention of his old nickname had stirred something deep inside his brain. How even as he professed ignorance of the shouted nickname, he somehow _knew_ the exact way that Steve would dip his head, tilt his shoulders, as if he'd spent a lifetime studying the way this man moved.

James writes about the mind-wipes and the pain, always the pain.

He writes about seeing Steve again, on the carrier, how even the latest procedure couldn't get rid of Steve. How he still _knows_ that Steve is important to him, even under the thin veneer of artificial hate.

Anyone but Steve and it might have worked, if it had _just_ been a childhood friendship. But Bucky had built his life around Steve. Steve was the sun in his universe, the star he set his ship by.

James writes about falling again, waking up on the ground with all the competing memories fighting in his head. How he lost days wandering the streets, struggling to set his mind to rights.

He writes about the day that he found himself sitting underneath a tree, shivering in the rain, but more _himself_ than he'd been in a long, long time.

James writes and writes until it's all there. His life in a plastic shopping bag of ratty, dirty notebooks. When he finishes the last story, he writes the one thing he's never been able to say.

_I love you, Steve._

He signs his name, the whole thing, because he's all of these parts now.

_James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, The Winter Soldier._

He carefully wraps the bag of stories in two of his best blankets. Then he settles them in a good, sturdy cardboard box he'd found.

He breaks into Steve's apartment and leaves the box on his dining room table. He knows Steve is gone, he keeps track as best he can.

James takes a moment in the apartment, looks around, drags his fingers along the record collection, goes into the bedroom and looks at the bed that Steve sleeps in. He says goodbye.

James locks the place back up, hefts his bundle of things, and heads North.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration: human by Christina Perri
> 
> Please let me know if I need to tag anything. <3
> 
>  
> 
> [Tumblr](goddessofcruelty.tumblr.com)


End file.
